Perkins Coie Adds to White Collar Team

Perkins Coie expanded its white collar and investigations practice team with the addition of two attorneys making the move from inside counsel back to private practice.

Rick Hosley and Chandra Westergaard joined the firm earlier this month from kidney care giant DaVita, Inc. They said their combined prior experience, in-house perspective and dovetailing expertise will help them make their new practice group into a powerhouse in the Rocky Mountain region.

Hosley and Westergaard joined Perkins Coie Sept. 4 and have now settled into their new digs — just across the street from their old ones. The two offices even share parking, Hosley said.

The two made the move as a pair in a continuation of a strong working relationship and a combined practice that they said will allow them to better serve corporate health care clients.

“Working with Chandra, we became a tight-knit team and wanted to continue that in the private space,” Hosley said. “I thought putting our practices together and building a partnership would make us a formidable team to help clients. There is no other group with the same level of government experience and in-house experience [and] that sets us apart in the Denver marketplace.”

Hosley brings with him experience as a U.S. Marine Corps officer and judge advocate — during which time he participated in combat operations and worked with tribal leaders and local officials to reestablish government functions in Western Iraq and served as a polling site observer during the 2005 Iraq Constitutional referendum. He has also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice as an assistant U.S. attorney in the districts of Montana and Colorado and as a white collar litigation partner at Hogan Lovells. At DaVita, he served as associate general counsel and vice president in charge of litigation.

Westergaard served as assistant general counsel and head of investigations for DaVita and was responsible for some of the company’s most important legal and regulatory matters, including internal health care compliance investigations, DOJ and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigations and enforcement actions and False Claims Act qui tam litigation. Prior working at DaVita, she was a member of Crowell & Moring’s health care group.

“At DaVita, we had the opportunity to work with a lot of outside counsel, and the model we saw work most successfully was a team approach,” Westergaard said. “Having a couple partners with different skill sets and putting those together gave [us] a better perspective.”

Seeing how that model could be effective from the in-house counsel perspective made them believe they could make a successful team in private practice.